Marcel Israël Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology. Today, he is perhaps better recognised for his influence on the latter discipline, particularly with respect to his analyses of topics such as magic, sacrifice and gift exchange in different cultures around the world. Mauss had a significant influence upon Claude Lévi-Strauss, the founder of structural anthropology.Moebius, Stephan; Nungesser, Frithjof (2014): ‚La filiation est directe‘ – L’influence de Marcel Mauss sur l’œuvre de Claude Lévi-Strauss. In: Eric Brian, Stephan Moebius, Frithjof Nungesser and Florence Weber (Eds.): Relire Mauss/Relektüren von Marcel Mauss. Trivium. Revue franco-allemande de sciences humaines et sociales. Deutsch-französische Zeitschrift für Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. http://trivium.revues.org/4836 . See also Barth, Fredrik (2005). One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. University of Chicago Press, p.208. His most famous work is The Gift (1925).
Biography
Family and education Mauss was born in Épinal, Vosges, to a Jewish family, his father a merchant and his mother an embroidery shop owner. Unlike his younger brother, Mauss did not join the family business and instead he joined the socialist and cooperative movement in the Vosges. Following the death of his grandfather, the Mauss and Durkheim families grew close and at this time Mauss began to feel concerned about his education and took initiatives in order to learn. Mauss obtained a religious education and was bar mitzvahed, yet by the age of eighteen he stopped practicing his religion.
Mauss studied philosophy at Bordeaux, where his maternal uncle Émile Durkheim was teaching at the time. In the 1890s, Mauss began his lifelong study of linguistics, Indology, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and the 'history of religions and uncivilized peoples' at the École pratique des hautes études. He passed the agrégation in 1893. He was also the first cousin of the much younger Claudette (née Raphael) Bloch, a marine biologist and mother of Maurice Bloch, who became a noted anthropologist. Instead of taking the usual route of teaching at a lycée following college, Mauss moved to Paris and took up the study of comparative religion and Sanskrit.
Academic career His first publication in 1896 marked the beginning of a prolific career that would produce several landmarks in sociological literature. Like many members of the group, Mauss was attracted to socialism, especially that espoused by Jean Jaurès. He was particularly engaged around the antisemitic events of the Dreyfus affair. Towards the end of the century, he helped edit such left-wing papers as , and , the last in collaboration with Georges Sorel.
In 1901, Mauss was appointed to the Chair of the History of Religions of Non-Civilized Peoples at the École pratique des hautes études. At this point, Mauss began drawing more on ethnography, and his work began to develop characteristics now associated with formal anthropology.
Mauss served in the French army during World War I from 1914 to 1919 as an interpreter. The military service was liberating from Mauss's intense academics, as he stated, "I'm doing wonderfully. I just wasn't made for the intellectual life and I am enjoying the life war is giving me" (Fournier 2006: 175). While liberating, he also dealt with the devastation and violence of the war as many of his friends and colleagues died in the war, and his uncle Durkheim died shortly before its end. Mauss began to write a book "On Politics" that remained unfinished, but the early 1920s emphasised his energy for politics through criticism of the Bolshevik's coercive resort to violence and their destruction of the market economy.
Like many other followers of Durkheim, Mauss took refuge in administration. He secured Durkheim's legacy by founding institutions to carry out research, such as (1924) and in 1926. These institutions stimulated the development of fieldwork-based anthropology by young academics. Among the students he influenced were George Devereux, Jeanne Cuisinier, Alfred Metraux, Marcel Griaule, Georges Dumezil, Denise Paulme, Michel Leiris, Germaine Dieterlen, Louis Dumont, Andre-Georges Haudricourt, Jacques Soustelle, and Germaine Tillion.
In 1931 Mauss was elected as the first holder of the Chair of Sociology in the , and soon after he married his secretary in 1934 who soon was bedridden after a poisonous gas incident. Later, in 1940, Mauss was forced out of his job as the Chair of Sociology and out of Paris due to the German occupation and anti-Semitic legislation passed. Mauss remained socially isolated following the war and died in 1950.
Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss: the uncle and the nephew
Moïse Durkheim and Mélanie Isidor, the parents of Émile Durkheim, had four children: Rosine (1848–1930), Félix (1850–1889), Céline (1851–1931), and Émile (1858–1917). Marcel Israël Mauss was one of the two children of Rosine Mauss and Gerson Mauss, alongside his younger brother Camille Henri Mauss. Both the uncle and nephew were born in Épinal, France, with a fourteen-year age difference.“David Emile Durkheim in the Paris, France, Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1555-1929.” 2021. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Actes de naissance, de mariage et de décès. Archives de Paris. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/3298914:62058?tid=&pid=&queryid=23224436-a30b-4dab-96f2-45f16bd68a80&_phsrc=Otr50&_phstart=successSource. Religion is a keyword in the family life of both Mauss and Durkheim, with Moïse Durkheim being the rabbi of Épinal and chief rabbi of Vosges. Although both Mauss and Durkheim later set themselves away from religious beliefs and practices, this contributed to their mutual interest in studying the history and sociology of religion.Durkheim, Émile. 1907. “Lettre Au Directeur,” 1907. In Textes, by Émile Durkheim, 1:404.
In 1887, Émile Durkheim was appointed to the Université de Bordeaux. He was later joined by his nephew in 1890, who was preparing for his degree in philosophy at Bordeaux. During their time at Bordeaux, Durkheim constantly interacted with Mauss through letters, guiding him in academic work and personal life. Between 1893 and 1894, when Mauss started to prepare for Agrégation, Durkheim, a philosophy agrégé and a member of the exam board, tutored Mauss for the exam. Durkheim also helped connect Mauss with Octave Hamelin, who became Mauss's close friend and an important tutor.Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, December 10, 1893. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 25. Durkheim defined his correspondence with Mauss as:Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, June 18, 1894. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 34-36.
During their time in Bordeaux, Durkheim was a strict and responsible tutor to Mauss. In their interactions through letters, Durkheim frequently demands Mauss to provide timely updates on his studies and his interactions with Rosine and his tutors. He stressed his responsibility to train him:Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, 1899. In Marcel Mauss: A Biography, by Marcel Fournier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. pp. 20.
The interactions between Durkheim and Mauss were not one-way help and guidance. When working on his book Suicide, Durkheim asked Mauss to help him annotate articles on suicide cases in the German army, England and Wales, and Spain, with a special focus on ranks and years of service in the army, gender, and professions.Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, 1896. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 43. Mauss then helped Durkheim compile the statistical tables in Suicide.Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, 1896. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 44. Durkheim, being a controversial figure in academia at the time, also seeks information about himself and other scholars’ interests in L’Année Sociologique from Mauss, although stressing it to be “secondary” when compared to updating on what Mauss was doing:Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, February–March, 1894. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 28-31.Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, May 15, 1894, Bordeaux. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 31-32.Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, Late November-Early December, 1896. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 48.
Mauss started assisting Durkheim in organizing and launching the L’Année Sociologique between 1895 and 1902. Mauss helped his uncle to recruit potential collaborators, including Paul Fauconnet, Henri Hubert, and Albert Milhaud. Durkheim envisioned the role of his nephew to be the “linchpin” in the formation of the journal and the broader theoretical transformation it would bring.Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, June, 1897. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 70-74. Mauss was assigned to work on the religious sociology section, the most important section for Durkheim, as he envisioned the journal to “create religious sociology” and to “make religion, no longer economics, the matrix of social facts.”Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, monday morning, June, 1897. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 67-70. Other than recruitment, Mauss was assigned by Durkheim to work up a “list of important works that he think it would be useful to have” and “catalog them by subject.”Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, May, 1897. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 56.
The collaboration between the uncle and nephew was not always smooth. Durkheim frequently scolded Mauss in their correspondence about his punctuality and over-complication:Durkheim, Émile. Letter from Émile Durkheim to Marcel Mauss, June 19, 1897. In Lettres à Marcel Mauss, edited by Philippe Besnard and Marcel Fournier. Sociologies. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 66.
Theoretical views
Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim
Marcel Mauss's studies under his uncle Durkheim at Bordeaux led to their doing work together on Primitive Classification which was published in L'Année Sociologique. In this work, Mauss and Durkheim attempted to create a French version of the sociology of knowledge, illustrating the various paths of human thought taken by different cultures, in particular how space and time are connected back to societal patterns. They focused their study on tribal societies in order to achieve depth.